


But For You It Was Just Another Day

by Sour_Idealist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftereffects, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e11 Scarecrow, Episode: s01e19 Provenance, Gen, Girl of the Week, Hunting, Other, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-13
Updated: 2012-05-18
Packaged: 2017-11-05 06:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/403396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two brothers walk the world, saving people, hunting things - </p><p>No, wait, try that again. Two brothers walk into your life and walk back out just as quickly, and by the time they leave, everything you thought you knew about what's real has gone to pieces.</p><p>What happens next?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. [Sarah Blake] their bearings strong and certain

**Author's Note:**

> And thus begins a project I've had planned for a while; hopefully, if I can stick with it, this will become a collection of stories about a _lot_ of the one-off characters - just now I'm shooting for one per episode. Evidently, no particular order will rule the posting. Enjoy!

“I do _not_ like this,” Sarah mutters, eying the blown-glass goblet burrowed into the mountains of packing peanuts. She flicks the tag on the box’s corner: _Lot 277, Item #2294, ornamental hand-blown Venetian glass._ “I really don’t.”

“What was that, hon?” her father calls, slightly muffled around the end of a pencil; he’s at the other end of the room, actually humming with delight over the mint-condition highboy. Sarah sighs.

“Nothing, Dad!” she calls, and hesitantly reaches in, pings a fingernail against the edge of the glass. It chimes, slightly muffled; she jumps more at the lack of anything remarkable than at the sound. “Yeesh. Get a grip, self.” Luckily, her sleeves are a little too long; she unbuttons one cuff, still eying the goblet. It manifestly fails to sprout legs and teeth. “Speaking of grips…”

Keeping the flimsy cotton of her shirt between her and the glass may not mean a _lot_ , but it’s a comfort, at least; she can still feel the ribbing on the stem, and she’s not thrilled with how her hand looks – zombielike and less than real – under the light filtered through the greenish glass. Seriously, the bowl on this thing is _huge,_ and squat and ugly to go with it. Goddamn hand-blown making everything worth keeping automatically.

She’s almost to her office when her father’s voice cuts her off. “Hon, what kind of way is that to carry a glass?”

She blinks, turning around a fair bit slower that is actually necessarily. “Um…” Shitshitshit. “I just don’t want to have to polish off the fingerprints, that’s all.” She grins – it’s flimsy, but hey, he’s still furniture-dazed. “They actually didn’t send us something completely buried in cobwebs and dust, it feels kind of ungrateful to just smudge it, that’s all.”

“Oh, okay, makes sense.” Already back to the highboy – or, no, he’s turned his attention to the sideboard now. Her mistake. She makes her getaway, shaking her head and smiling.

The number she wants is still in her phone – still under C, too, which can’t be right, but as long as she knows who it is. Besides, plausible deniability. She drums her fingers on the desk in time with the phone’s dialing drone, five beats to one quote-unquote ring.

“Uh, hello?”

“Sam? Sam the ghost-killer with the brother Dean? It’s Sarah, Sarah Blake, I don’t know if you remember me…” She keeps her voice down, glancing at the door, not that there’s any reason she shouldn’t be calling him particularly. Other than the kind-of-crazy part.

“ _Sarah_? No, of course I –”

“Hang on, Sarah’s calling you? The art dealer with the ass thing? _Hell_ yes, I told you –”

“Shut up, Dean!” There’s a rush of static-ridden movement and the sound of a thump, followed by laughter and a piercing wolf-whistle. “For God’s sake, will you just –”

“Having problems?” Sarah interrupts, biting at her lip to keep her own laughter in as she perches on the edge of her desk. (Chairs are for occasions.) “I can call back later –”

“No, no, now’s fine, it’s fine –”

“Don’t start the phonesex while I’m in earshot,” Dean calls; the _thwack_ that echoes along the line this time is louder by at least a few decibels, but he doesn’t sound any more deterred. This time Sarah can’t help laughing along with him, shaking her hair behind her shoulders.

“Not that it’s not good to hear you guys having fun – be nice to your brother, Dean!” she tacks on, concluding hell-with-it, “but this is actually kind of a business call, I’m sorry. Your business, not mine – well, mostly your business, kind of mine, but you get the idea.”

“Oh.” Sam sounds distracted; there’s a rustling clatter, familiar – oh, that’s totally the sound of someone rummaging one-handed. Paper rustles. “Uh, we’re sort of in Nevada… probably…”

“Screw you, dude, it’s totally Nevada! I can at least get a freakin’ _state_ right –”

“That’s fine,” Sarah interrupts, nudging the goblet a little further away from her – with her forearm, not her hand – and resettling herself on the desk, avoiding a carefully arranged potential-avalanche of papers with the ease of old, old practice. “I don’t need you guys to show up here or anything, I’m just looking for a couple tips. Also, uh, not to be awkward, but I can do a little embezzling and donate a GPS for the good of humanity if you guys like.”

“No point, Dean would just break it,” Same observes absently; the rummaging noises return, overlaid with an irritated “Hey!” from what she devoutly hopes is the driver’s seat. “Thanks, though. What kind of tips are we looking for, here?”

“I’ve got this goblet – okay, let me back up a second.” She sighs, resettling herself. “I’ve been trying to do a quick background check on everyone whose affairs we handle, okay, see if anything odd comes up, and the family that owned this thing, they’ve lost someone every generation to either poisoning, _food_ poisoning, allergic reactions...”

“And you think the goblet’s doing it.”

“Sure it’s not just unlucky?” Dean sounds less muffled; she guesses Sam put her on speakerphone, which makes sense if he’s digging for something. “Don’t get offended, always gotta ask that.”

“Well, I guess it’s possible,” she admits, picking at the edge of her blotter. “But it’s been exactly one per generation since at least the 1800s, always somewhere between late December and the start of spring, and according to the seller they had a tradition of New Year’s Eve toasts using that goblet. So…”

Sam whistles through his teeth, low and quick. “Sounds like you’ve got a case. So. Anything in particular you were looking for? You remember the haunting protocols, right –”

“Burn the body,” she says. “And, uh, salt it first, right? Is that –”

“Uh, yeah, it’s a good backup, sometimes just cremation will do it but the salt lets you be sure.”

“Can I throw salt in the ashes if it’s already burned?” she interrupts, spinning a pen between her fingers.

“That’s actually a good question – hey, Dean, did we ever work out if the order of that is important?” he asks.

“I don’t think it’s come up,” he says; she notices his voice sounds rough, like he’s been yelling lately, and sighs at herself, quiet enough for her speakers not to catch it. Of course he’s been yelling; their life probably involves a lot of reasons for it. “Worth a shot, though. Let us know how it goes if it happens.”

“It might not be a spirit, though,” Sam cuts in before she can say anything at all. “It sounds more like a curse, honestly, and that gets complicated – uh, is it okay if I email you this stuff later? I mean, it’s not that I don’t want to talk to you, but there’s a lot of it, and my phone’s about to die –”

“No, that’s fine, that’s fine.” She shoves the pen behind her ear. “That’s great, actually. I was hoping I’d be able to get a copy of some of your notes for reference, in case something like this comes up again –”

“Oh.”

“I’ll be careful, of course,” she hurries to add before he can get further than that. “Don’t worry about it. I carry salt already, and I’ve got my necklace.”

“Your what.” The monotone is impressive, and she muffles a laugh behind her hand.

“No, I’m sorry – I got myself an iron pendant, pure iron, and strung it on this old silver chain I have, a long one. So I’m always armed, at least enough to shove in a ghost’s face and give myself time to get away.”

“Told you you should have married her,” Dean mutters.

“She can _hear_ you, jackass!” Sam yelps, punctuating it with what sounds like a smack, which gets a noise of protest this time around. She smiles, reaching across the desk to click her computer on.

“Tell your brother he sounds like my aunt. Should I text you my email address, so you’ll have it written down?”

“Sounds great, thanks – shit, I’m losing power –”

The voice cuts off. Sarah chuckles, clicks over to messaging and eyes the goblet over the edge of her phone. “You’re dead meat,” she informs it, in case there are any spirits listening, and shoves herself off the desk with a smile. Can’t spend all day threatening glassware – she’s got work to do.


	2. [Emily Jorgeson] and here I stand with a sword in my hand

Emily catches an eastbound bus with three thin plastic cards stretching the cloth of her pocket, her twice-bitten tongue leaking salt through her mouth, and smoke caught in her hair. The glass is cool against her forehead, and behind her the boys – the brothers? – stand by the bus-stop sign (no taller than they are) and watch her go.

The sky is still painted a thousand colors at the end of the road, muted pinks and oranges like a seashell collection coated in dust, and she watches the clouds drift inch by inch across the sky and twists her tongue so the skin stretches across the bites. It’s a bad habit, one she’s always had.

The sunsets have always been beautiful here.

She looks behind her, imagines she can see the smoke still rising. _Maybe I should have stayed another day. Just to see._

The bus turns a corner, and an overhanging branch – an apple branch – scratches against the window. She narrows her eyes and nudges the backpack at her feet, pressing it into the corner between wall and seat a little more securely.

\----

She folds her legs under her and leans back against the wall – _her_ wall, her new apartment. The floor creaks with every breath she takes and mold skitters across the walls like acne. (Her aunt’s house never had so much as a speck of the stuff.)

“I’ll scrub you off eventually, bastard,” she murmurs, grins and flicks a finger against the nearest blue splotch staining the paint, and pats the lid of her laptop as it hums its slow way to life.

_Inbox (2)._

_Jo (Enihpesoj91@gmail.com) replied to your comment!_

_Jo (Enihpesoj91@gmail.com) replied to your comment!_

Her breath catches in her throat; she pulls air in through her nose, wraps her fingers around the edge of the keyboard, and realizes she’s smiling – almost enough to be a grimace, but not quite. She clicks the message open.

_I might be a little biased here, but a hunter’s bar is probably a good place to start! I’ll ask mom for the name of a good one – there must be a bunch in Boston. Once you’re a familiar face it probably won’t be too hard to pick things up, most of us like to talk._

_It’s good to see another girl in the business! :) If anyone gives you a hard time about it, threaten to kick ‘em in the nuts. Hunters respect that._

The next message is, true to her promise, an address. Emily smiles.

\----

She walks into the bar – the Shotgun – in a ponytail, her brightest lipstick, and combat boots bought secondhand a week ago. She’s barely taken them off since, first training herself to the surprising weight and then too fond of it to put her sneakers on again; tonight she enjoys the clomp of the soles against the concrete floor as she weaves her way between neon-washed tables and slides onto a barstool a bit too tall for comfort. It’s clean, at least, and the bar isn’t sticky when she leans her arms against it.

“Can I get a Corona?” she asks the bartender, mostly because it’s the first name that jumps at her in the glowing tangled letters. He – tall, dark-skinned, could be stuck together out of bits of coatrack with a beard frosting along his chin – raises an eyebrow, rummages under the counter and slides a bottle over to her.

“Hon, not that I can’t use the business,” he murmurs, talking to the bones of her wrist, “but I don’t think this is the kind of place you’re looking for.” Her head jerks up.

“I think it is,” she says, and doesn’t so much as blink until he meets her gaze – one beat, two, three, and a grin splits through his face like lightning.

“In that case,” he says. “You want anything to eat?”

\----

It’s her third Saturday and twelfth night at the bar, scratches in the plastic-topped corner table familiar under her wandering hands – left, right, the split, straighter lines than a map of the city – when a familiar name one table over flickers past her. She blinks and straightens up, running her tongue around the lip of the bottle as she tilts her head to listen.

“Winchester?” she asks. Two heads jerk around – people she’s seen before. She raises her beer, half toast, half wave.

“Whatever ones you’re thinking of, we’re not talking about them,” the woman on the other side of the table says, draining a shot. Her arms flex, dramatic enough that Emily’s eyebrows flicker up; the other woman’s companion (short and compact enough to fit two of her in her baggy jacket) smiles apologetically and doesn’t say a word to counteract the dismissal, shoving her messy crop of thick black hair behind her ears. Emily braces her arms on the table.

“How many sets of Winchesters are there in this business?” she asks, struggling to imitate the way the bartender – Charles – turned the word _business_ through his mouth like a membership card. It makes her think of first-year Spanish, but the shot-drainer doesn’t look any more contemptuous than she did already.

“Looks like at least two,” she says, clunking her glass down. Her free hand wanders to the dog-tags strung around her neck. “Wonder if I’ve heard of yours.” That gets her a sideways look from her companion, and Emily shrugs.

“Two of them, they’re both way too tall, um, one of them was called Dean – kind of a smartass? And the other one was even taller, he had way too much hair.” She pauses. “Old black car they took good care of? And they were fighting about something. It looked like family drama, I didn’t ask.”

Her interrogator snorts, eyebrow crooking as she crosses her boots. “Well, that sounds like John’s boys after all. How’d you get to know _them?_ They’re a disaster on wheels and allergic to people.”

“My aunt and uncle tried to sacrifice Dean and I in a fertility ritual to keep the town thriving.” It rolls off her tongue straight-faced and she can all but see her scratched-up bathroom mirror. The long, slow whistle she gets, followed by a sharp short trill from the other woman – it’s worth the time she took to practice.

“And now you’re here.” The dog-tags shine between her fingers; she rubs a thumb over the letters one by one. Emily nods.

“Yup.”

She can hear glasses clinking a few tables away.

It’s the smaller hunter who shrugs and tugs out a chair. “I’m Miriam,” she offers. “Baldy over here is Rose, but she actually prefers Baldy. C’mon, sit – tell us more about this whole fertility ritual thing. I think that's a new one.”

"Well," Emily starts, moving over. "Okay, so when I was thirteen..."


End file.
